Hi All-So I have a Multiplex Easystar on order and I'm looking to develop my own autopilot using a standard Arduino. I'm trying to decide whether to use the Mega or the Nano for my project. On one hand the nano is extremely small and lightweight, but the mega has a lot more memory to work with.I want to eventually include all the fruit as well: gps, wireless (xbee pro 900), camera etc so I'm concerned about weight, battery life and whether the nano will be flexible enough to provide all the features.Any thoughts?
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Sure - If you were going to go the nano route why wouldn't you go with ArduPilot. It is similar size and is already optimized for autopilot use with an onboard ATTiny for failsafe control multiplexing. You can still write your own code from scratch if you want to do it all yourself.
The tradeoff between ArduPilot/nano and Mega is simply a matter of how complex you want to be able to grow the system. For myself I would start out with ArduPilot. Since you want to do much of it yourself (bravo) on an easystar ArduPilot will give you capability to have IMU or thermopile stabilization, gps navigation, xbee downlink (possibly uplink too depending on what else you are doing), pitot airspeed, maybe even FPV with autopilot data OSD.
And of course if you are like me you should definitely start off with ArduPilot/Nano as you will certainly have more than 1 UAV in your future and can do Mega next time :)
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The tradeoff between ArduPilot/nano and Mega is simply a matter of how complex you want to be able to grow the system. For myself I would start out with ArduPilot. Since you want to do much of it yourself (bravo) on an easystar ArduPilot will give you capability to have IMU or thermopile stabilization, gps navigation, xbee downlink (possibly uplink too depending on what else you are doing), pitot airspeed, maybe even FPV with autopilot data OSD.
And of course if you are like me you should definitely start off with ArduPilot/Nano as you will certainly have more than 1 UAV in your future and can do Mega next time :)